“We’d just like to come in and assure ourselves the animals are well cared for.”
Lavinia tells them to wait a second, closes the door, and turns up the TV, hoping to drown out the inevitable whining and scratching from the bedrooms and basement. A soap opera is on. Lavinia turns the dial two clicks. The woman outside hollers “Mrs. Simms?” so Lavinia settles on a game show, with its bells and frequent clapping. Then she unchains the door and invites the two Humane workers in.
The lady has a face that ought to be pleasant — soft cheeks, bright blue eyes, yellow eyebrows — but strikes Lavinia as arrogant and unknowing. The man shakes Lavinia’s hand and introduces himself as Tom Mitchell. “This is Dawn Kester,” he says. Tom is very tall and thin, his narrow, too-small face split by a thick, straight mustache which obscures his upper lip. Dawn looks around appraisingly. Tom raises his eyebrows and nods at nothing in particular.
“Well, you can see I have a few cats.” Lavinia waves her hand around the room. Lucifer jumps onto the recliner and stretches his paws against Tom’s leg.
Eight is okay, Lavinia thinks.
“Hey, buddy.” Tom reaches out to pet him, but Lucifer swats his hand away and a thin line of blood appears on Tom’s finger. He glances at it with lifted brows, pursing his lips.
“Sorry,” Lavinia grabs the cat. “He’s like that.” She puts Lucifer in the kitchen, and turns to find Dawn on her heels. Behind Dawn the small living room looks suddenly foreign. A bookshelf blocking half the front window and piled haphazardly with yellowed, dog-eared paperbacks. A threadbare autumn-gold loveseat with avocado stripes obscured by cat hair. A brown, sculpted shag carpet spotted with stains — cat puke, the occasional potty accident and, of course, the blueberry mollusk. A blue La-Z-Boy with a seat cushion pilled to gray by zealous paws. Above the La-Z-Boy the back of a culled calendar page is taped at its torn frill. In black marker, printed neatly in block letters, the page reads, What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.
“Mrs. Simms, do you think you could turn the TV down?” Tom says.
With one long step, Dawn reduces the contestant’s joy to a pathetic, distant screech. Lavinia wants to slap her hand. She can hear Plato crying, his squeaky meow like an unoiled bike chain.
“I’m sorry,” she says loudly, tapping her right ear, “you’ll have to forgive me. A bit hard of hearing. So what can I do for you?”
Dawn scratches her nose with her thumbnail and clears her throat. “Mrs. Simms, we need to take a look around. To inspect the premises. We’ve had reports you have a number of cats living in unsanitary conditions.”
Was cat hair considered unsanitary? How about a few spots on the rug? She tried to get the blueberry stain out, but the rug is old, none of that stain protector they advertise these days.
“Well, as you can see, I’m a widow, don’t have much money. My cats are healthy, though, and well fed. I take very good care of them.”
“The report suggested you had more than a few cats. More than these,” Tom says. “And to be honest, ma’am, the house doesn’t smell very good.”
“May I?” Dawn says, motioning toward the kitchen.
Lavinia steps aside. Tom and Jerry, a pair of littermates Lavinia picked up at a garage sale, stand on the counter peering through a smear of white bird poop on the dusty glass.
“Exactly how many cats did you say you have?” Dawn, looking at the plates and the scattered crunchers on the floor, shrivels her small, round nose.
Lavinia recognizes repulsion. It is the expression most often seen on a person before he hangs himself.
She checks out the window. Of course old man Pultwock is standing in the narrow strip of gravel between their houses. Lavinia sees the interest in his eager face, the bright, alert way he watches the van parked out front. He drags on his cigarette, then flicks the filter toward Lavinia and pulls out his pack to take another.
“Mrs. Simms? How many cats do you have?”
“What difference does it make?”
Tom calls in from the other room, “Dawn, come take a look.”
He’s standing in the doorway to the back bedroom. Lavinia hollers, “Who do you think you are? This is my home!”
Dawn continues toward the room as if deaf while Tom cocks his head to the side and sighs. “I better call my wife. She’ll freak if I’m late for dinner.”
They call the police, who must subdue Lavinia before the cats can be removed. It turns out the kittens are dead. Somebody broke their necks while Lavinia was talking to Tom and Dawn.
When they run out of cages, Dawn stays behind to write up reports while Tom drives the first load back to the Humane Society and returns with more cages and another woman, who helps him round up the remaining cats and load them in the car.
After everyone is gone, Lavinia sits at her Bakelite table, tilting to the left where the foot of one leg came off years ago. Her head aches from crying and her hip hurts where she fell, slipping on a pool of Friskies vomit by the basement door when she tried to bar Tom’s way down. The plastic plates lie around her, scattered into the middle of the room, several upended.
This can’t be right, she thinks. She must have some recourse.
She considers calling Christopher, but can’t bear the thought of his perfunctory pity.
A knife lying on the counter catches Lavinia’s eye and she imagines herself knocking on Pultwock’s door and, when he opens it — all bathrobe and day-old cigarettes — stabbing him. She imagines the look of surprise cross his greasy features.
Lavinia gets the knife. She stabs at the air first with an overhand grip, then underhand. This would be better, she thinks, for getting him before he can see what is coming, a blow beneath the ribs, right where his flimsy robe ties around his disgusting potbelly, like a sack of skinned rabbits shuddering beneath the terry cloth.
Lavinia goes to the back door. On this side of the lock the other half of the envelope outside reads, Rarely is suicide committed through reflection. If a friend addressed him indifferently that day, he is the guilty one.
Lavinia opens the door quietly and looks across to Pultwock’s porch, at his dark windows, giving nothing away. She goes out, holding the screen door until it latches, then crosses the gravel path, stepping on a pile of cigarette butts in the dark, fallen heroes under her slippered feet. Around back she tries to spot him through the kitchen window. The house sits on a high foundation, though, and even on her tiptoes, ingrown nails piercing painfully, Lavinia can’t see in. She moves to the living room, where the windows are set lower, cups her hands beside her eyes, the knife held precariously between her thumb and the edge of her palm.
In the contrast between dark and light, Lavinia can now see the picture clearly. Her mother is hugging the dog Lavinia sent to the pound with one arm and clutching the throat of her bathrobe closed with the other, as if someone has caught her unprepared. But she smiles. The surprise is not wholly unwelcome.
Lavinia adjusts her hands and sees Pultwock at the kitchen table, just as she was a moment ago. He has a plate of eggs and a piece of toast, but instead of eating, he’s smoking a cigarette.
He looks behind him, sees Lavinia staring and waves. He doesn’t even seem surprised. Did he see her come outside? Perhaps tracked her progress around the house? She wonders if he sees the knife.
The back door opens and Lavinia hears his voice. “Fifty-five with the new ones!” he shouts.
“What?” Lavinia grips her knife in the underhand position.
“Fifty-five fucking cats I counted,” Pultwock says.
Lavinia tromps to the back door and stands in the dark. “You were the one who called, weren’t you?”
Standing on the lowest step, Pultwock cinches his robe. “I didn’t call nobody. Fifty-four fucking cats is pretty hard to hide.”